Over the years, the popularity of less invasive procedures such as physical therapy have grown significantly. Various systems have been developed for applying a non-invasive therapeutic treatment to a patient such as for physical therapy. These systems generally may include therapeutic ultrasound units, electrical stimulation units, or a combination thereof. A therapeutic ultrasound unit, for example, employs a high frequency oscillator and a power amplifier to generate a high frequency electrical signal that is then delivered to a piezoelectric transducer housed in a handheld applicator. The transducer converts the electrical signal to ultrasonic energy at the same frequency. The ultrasonic energy is then transmitted to the patient by applying a radiating plate on the transducer against the patient's skin.
Of the total power of the electrical signal delivered to the transducer, only a portion is actually radiated to the patient's tissue as ultrasonic energy. The other portion of the total power is dissipated in the transducer and parts of the applicator in the form of heat. As the applicator is moved over a treatment site, the acoustic coupling to the patient's body changes which results in a change in the proportion of the power radiated to the patient relative to the power dissipated in the transducer. This coupling efficiency change is caused by changes in acoustic impedance as different types of tissue are encountered, and as air, whose acoustic impedance is much different than that of tissue, enters the space between the skin and the applicator.
Likewise, an electrical stimulation unit, for example, employs a high frequency oscillator and a power amplifier to generate a high frequency electrical signal that is then delivered to a transducer, such as an electrode. The electrical energy is then transmitted to the patient by applying a probe contact containing the electrode against the patient's skin. The amplitude of the electrical signal plays a significant role in these electrical stimulation systems because the lower the amplitude of the electrical signal, the more tolerant the patient is to the stimulation transmitted by the electrode.
During the use of these types of physical therapy systems, however, the amount of power, the frequency, and amplitude parameters, for example, may vary particularly depending on the particular physical ailment of the patient intended to be addressed by the physical therapist or user of the system. The different types of injuries and treatments for these injuries are numerous. Also, each treatment technique or procedure has numerous variations of the power, frequency, amplitude, treatment time and the like appropriate for the treatment procedure. Further, in order to provide the best rehabilitation or other therapeutic treatment, the physical therapy systems must be properly configured.
The physical therapist is therefore required to either memorize or have a reference manual handy to refer to various clinical protocol procedures and application procedures for use of the ultrasound or electrical stimulation system for these numerous types of physical ailments and then configure the system according to the protocol procedures. Systems have also been developed which save a protocol procedure for later reference once the user of the system enters the required application parameters and configures the system for a particular protocol procedure.
The burden on the physical therapist to remember the protocol procedures and the system application parameters for the procedures for the numerous physical ailments, to search a reference manual, to enter application parameters into a physical therapy system for configuration either initially for various systems desired to be used or continuously for each system is tremendous. These various options for the physical therapist are also time consuming, error prone, i.e., incorrect operational parameters entered by the physical therapist, and ultimately more costly to patients.